


Your Love Tastes like Bitter Ashes in my Mouth

by Supertights



Category: Marvel (Comics), Runaways (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Future, Cyborgs, Dark Character, Explicit Language, Friends to Enemies, Grief/Mourning, Implied Future Character Death, Imprisonment, Latino Character, M/M, Mildly Dubious Consent, Not Beta Read, POV Third Person, Wordcount: 100-1.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-10-04
Updated: 2008-10-04
Packaged: 2017-11-24 05:23:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 946
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/630901
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Supertights/pseuds/Supertights
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chase is haunted by the ghost of a dead friend.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Your Love Tastes like Bitter Ashes in my Mouth

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Dorksidefiker](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dorksidefiker/gifts).



Chase blinked and wiped the sweat out his eyes. He picked up a spanner and threw it across the room angrily. It hit the wall and fell to the floor with a clatter.

Breathing out calmly, he choose another tool, one better suited for working in the wreckage of his friend's artificial brain. "Talk to me--" he muttered.

_"I love the way you talk to machines, I feel a connection to you."_

The voice haunted him. Purring softly across his memories, caressing his broken heart as the owner had once caressed his body. Then he was wiping away more than sweat as he realised how futile it was trying to repair Jonas. He took his friend's body into his arms and wept.

He heard the loud snick of the heavy door being unlocked and opened. Someone entered the room behind him. He laid Jonas back down on the bench, caressing the face that had reverted to half human, half Vision in his death throes.

"Fuck off, Victorious, I'm too fucking weary for any more of your games."

Soft footfalls traced a path to his side and an arm slid lightly across his shoulders. He tried to shrug it off.

"Chase-- don't be like this. He's gone, why can't you just accept it?"

"You brought him here because you knew I'd try to save him and fail."

"Would I do that to you?" It sounded like an honest question but Victorious knew how to modulate his voice to project honesty.

"Let me go." It came out more as a plea than the demand Chase had tried for but he was tired and not thinking straight.

Victorious smiled. "I don't think so. It's more fun keeping you alive."

"I meant take your fucking arm off me, dumbass!" Chase pushed at the cyborg, who was an immovable force, but the arm fell away from his shoulders.

Victor picked up his dead brother's arm curiously, torn from the body just below the elbow, and patted Chase's head with the hand. The smile was fixed in place confirming Chase's long held suspicion that the face of _his_  Vic was gone forever, replaced by a mask that played at being human when it wanted to.

"They'll kill you when they find out about him." Taking the arm back from Vic, he laid it on the workbench, caressing the frozen outstretched fingers.   
  
"I wish you'd touch me like that again."

Chase put a finger on Victor's mouth and smoothed the smile away. "He was my friend and your _brother_ ," he said softly. "Fake some respect, Machine. God knows why but he loved you."

"I loved--"

"You don't love anyone." Chase hit Victor with a heavy wrench from the bench top, tearing open his cheek, exposing the bones beneath the flesh. They looked almost human now but for a faint metallic glitter.

The cyborg took the wrench from Chase's hand and tossed it away. He pressed the edges of the wound together and the skin began to heal. "You're the only one I'd allow to do that to me-- but only so you can see how useless it is. Can't you see yet? There is no one left who can hurt me, Chase."

"All I see is a wooden boy who murdered the blue fairy to be real but inside his heart is still wood and it's rotting away."

Victor backed him up, trapping him against the bench. "I thought you said I _was_  a real boy?" His face was millimetre's away, the smile had returned with a predatory slant.

"Not anymore. You grew up and became a monster," whispered Chase, he groped behind, finding the laser scalpel he'd been using on Jonas earlier. "Kiss me like _my_ Vic did in the old days."

"Clown prince, I _am_  your Vic." The machine laughed, his mouth hot and demanding as he obeyed eagerly.

Closing his eyes, Chase imagined for a moment that it really _was_  his lover. The lips felt right, the tongue in his mouth was the right shape, the hands on his hips touched him the right way, the body closed the space between them and fitted up against him in all the right places.

He leaned into the cyborg, who was right in every way except the one that mattered. "Not _my_  real boy," he cried, plunging the scalpel deep into Victor's eye.

Victor grabbed Chase's hand and yanked it away, wrenching his arm badly to pull the blade out. Energy and thin bloody fluid poured from the wound. Victor glared at him with his one remaining good eye.

They stood like that for what seemed like an age. Chase holding the scalpel, Victor holding his hand tightly, squeezing until they heard the crack of breaking bones and Chase released the blade with yelp of pain. He fell to his knees clasping his broken hand protectively.

"I loved _him_  more," he whispered, nodding at the torn body of Jonas.

Powerful hands wrapped around his throat, crushing it. "Liar."

"And her-- I n-never got over h-her, no matter h-how many nights _we_  spent t-together." Chase welcomed the growing darkness clawing at the edge of his sight as he grew weaker, slumping against Victor's legs.

"LIAR!" Such fury for a machine.

Chase smiled blindly, realising there was one person left in the world who could hurt Victor.

Then the pressure disappeared and he was lifted gently in strong arms, held and cradled against Victor's warm chest. "But still it seems I'm not ready to kill you yet. The day I feel nothing at all when I look at your dying face, well, that might just be the day I'm ready to murder the world."


End file.
